Reading HttpURLConnection InputStream - manual buffer or BufferedInputStream? - buffer

When reading the InputStream of an HttpURLConnection, is there any reason to use one of the following over the other? I've seen both used in examples.
Manual Buffer:
while ((length = inputStream.read(buffer)) > 0) {
os.write(buf, 0, ret);
}
BufferedInputStream
is = http.getInputStream();
bis = new BufferedInputStream(is);
ByteArrayBuffer baf = new ByteArrayBuffer(50);
int current = 0;
while ((current = bis.read()) != -1) {
baf.append(current);
}
EDIT I'm still new to HTTP in general but one consideration that comes to mind is that if I am using a persistent HTTP connection, I can't just read until the input stream is empty right? In that case, wouldn't I need to read the message length and just read the input stream for that length?
And similarly, if NOT using a persistent connection, is the code I included 100% good to go in terms of reading the stream properly?

I talk about a good way to do it on my blog in a post about using JSON in android. http://blog.andrewpearson.org/2010/07/android-why-to-use-json-and-how-to-use.html. I will post the relevant part of the relevant post below (the code is pretty generalizable):
InputStream in = null;
String queryResult = "";
try {
URL url = new URL(archiveQuery);
HttpURLConnection urlConn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
HttpURLConnection httpConn = (HttpURLConnection) urlConn;
httpConn.setAllowUserInteraction(false);
httpConn.connect();
in = httpConn.getInputStream();
BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(in);
ByteArrayBuffer baf = new ByteArrayBuffer(50);
int read = 0;
int bufSize = 512;
byte[] buffer = new byte[bufSize];
while(true){
read = bis.read(buffer);
if(read==-1){
break;
}
baf.append(buffer, 0, read);
}
queryResult = new String(baf.toByteArray());
} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
// DEBUG
Log.e("DEBUG: ", e.toString());
} catch (IOException e) {
// DEBUG
Log.e("DEBUG: ", e.toString());
}
}

Regarding persistent HTTP connections it is just the opposite. You should read everything from the input stream. Otherwise the Java HTTP client does not know that the HTTP request is complete and the socket connection can be reused.
See http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/net/http-keepalive.html:
What can you do to help with Keep-Alive?
Do not abandon a connection by
ignoring the response body. Doing so
may results in idle TCP connections.
That needs to be garbage collected
when they are no longer referenced.
If getInputStream() successfully
returns, read the entire response
body.

Use former -- latter has no real benefits over first one, and is bit slower; reading things byte by byte is inefficient even if buffered (although horribly slow when not buffered). That style of reading input went out of vogue with C; although may be useful in cases where you need to find an end marker of some sort.

Only if you're using the BufferedInputStream-specific methods.

Related

Iterate and write to an ObjectOutputStream

When should I close an ObjectOutputStream using the following code? Thank you all...
try{
ObjectOutputStream output = new ObjectOutputStream(client.getOutputStream());
AnObject[] array = new AnObject[4];
for(int i = 0; i < array.length ; i++){
array[i] = new AnObject();
output.writeObject(array[i]);
}
output.flush();
output.close();
}
catch(IOException e){
processException();
}
Whenever you're done using it. You should flush() after sending, to force through all the data added to the stream's buffer to your underlying stream (Object*Streams are wrappers to your client's OutputStream), even if the stream's buffer isn't full.
Also, no need to flush before closing, because output.close() calls flush().
It looks like you close it after sending data, so unless you have more stuff to send through your client's stream, you're closing properly.

Video streaming to ipad does not work with Tapestry5

I want to stream a video to my IPad via the HTML5 video tag with tapestry5 (5.3.5) on the backend. Usually the serverside framework shouldn't even play a role in this but somehow it does.
Anyway, hopefully someone here can help me out. Please keep in mind that my project is very much a prototype and that what I describe is simplified / reduced to the relevant parts. I would very much appreciate it if people didn't respond with the obligatory "you want to do the wrong thing" or security/performance nitpicks that aren't relevant to the problem.
So here it goes:
Setup
I have a video taken from the Apple HTML5 showcase so I know that format isn't an issue. I have a simple tml page "Play" that just contains a "video" tag.
Problem
I started by implementing a RequestFilter that handles the request from the video control by opening the referenced video file and streaming it to client. That's basic "if path starts with 'file' then copy file inputstream to response outputstream". This works very well with Chrome but not with the Ipad. Fine, I though, must be some headers I'm missing so I looked at the Apple Showcase again and included the same headers and content type but no joy.
Next, I though, well, let's see what happens if I let t5 serve the file. I copied the video to the webapp context, disabled my request filter and put the simple filename in the video's src attribute. This works in Chrome AND IPad.
That surprised me and prompted me to look at how T5 handles static files / context request. Thus far I've only gotten so far as to feel like there are two different paths which I've confirmed by switching out the hardwired "video src" to an Asset with a #Path("context:"). This, again, works on Chrome but not on IPad.
So I'm really lost here. What's this secret juice in the "simple context" requests that allow it to work on the IPad? There is nothing special going on and yet it's the only way this works. Problem is, I can't really serve those vids from my webapp context ...
Solution
So, it turns out that there is this http header called "Range" and that the IPad, unlike Chrome uses it with video. The "secret sauce" then is that the servlet handler for static resource request know how to deal with range requests while T5's doesn't. Here is my custom implementation:
OutputStream os = response.getOutputStream("video/mp4");
InputStream is = new BufferedInputStream( new FileInputStream(f));
try {
String range = request.getHeader("Range");
if( range != null && !range.equals("bytes=0-")) {
logger.info("Range response _______________________");
String[] ranges = range.split("=")[1].split("-");
int from = Integer.parseInt(ranges[0]);
int to = Integer.parseInt(ranges[1]);
int len = to - from + 1 ;
response.setStatus(206);
response.setHeader("Accept-Ranges", "bytes");
String responseRange = String.format("bytes %d-%d/%d", from, to, f.length());
logger.info("Content-Range:" + responseRange);
response.setHeader("Connection", "close");
response.setHeader("Content-Range", responseRange);
response.setDateHeader("Last-Modified", new Date().getTime());
response.setContentLength(len);
logger.info("length:" + len);
byte[] buf = new byte[4096];
is.skip(from);
while( len != 0) {
int read = is.read(buf, 0, len >= buf.length ? buf.length : len);
if( read != -1) {
os.write(buf, 0, read);
len -= read;
}
}
} else {
response.setStatus(200);
IOUtils.copy(is, os);
}
} finally {
os.close();
is.close();
}
I want to post my refined solution from above. Hopefully this will be useful to someone.
So basically the problem seemed to be that I was disregarding the "Range" http request header which the IPad didn't like. In a nutshell this header means that the client only wants a certain part (in this case a byte range) of the response.
This is what an iPad html video request looks like::
[INFO] RequestLogger Accept:*/*
[INFO] RequestLogger Accept-Encoding:identity
[INFO] RequestLogger Connection:keep-alive
[INFO] RequestLogger Host:mars:8080
[INFO] RequestLogger If-Modified-Since:Wed, 10 Oct 2012 22:27:38 GMT
[INFO] RequestLogger Range:bytes=0-1
[INFO] RequestLogger User-Agent:AppleCoreMedia/1.0.0.9B176 (iPad; U; CPU OS 5_1 like Mac OS X; en_us)
[INFO] RequestLogger X-Playback-Session-Id:BC3B397D-D57D-411F-B596-931F5AD9879F
It means that the iPad only wants the first byte. If you disregard this header and simply send a 200 response with the full body then the video won't play. So, you need send a 206 response (partial response) and set the following response headers:
[INFO] RequestLogger Content-Range:bytes 0-1/357772702
[INFO] RequestLogger Content-Length:2
This means "I'm sending you byte 0 through 1 of 357772702 total bytes available".
When you actually start playing the video, the next request will look like this (everything except the range header ommited):
[INFO] RequestLogger Range:bytes=0-357772701
So my refined solution looks like this:
OutputStream os = response.getOutputStream("video/mp4");
try {
String range = request.getHeader("Range");
/** if there is no range requested we will just send everything **/
if( range == null) {
InputStream is = new BufferedInputStream( new FileInputStream(f));
try {
IOUtils.copy(is, os);
response.setStatus(200);
} finally {
is.close();
}
return true;
}
requestLogger.info("Range response _______________________");
String[] ranges = range.split("=")[1].split("-");
int from = Integer.parseInt(ranges[0]);
/**
* some clients, like chrome will send a range header but won't actually specify the upper bound.
* For them we want to send out our large video in chunks.
*/
int to = HTTP_DEFAULT_CHUNK_SIZE + from;
if( to >= f.length()) {
to = (int) (f.length() - 1);
}
if( ranges.length == 2) {
to = Integer.parseInt(ranges[1]);
}
int len = to - from + 1 ;
response.setStatus(206);
response.setHeader("Accept-Ranges", "bytes");
String responseRange = String.format("bytes %d-%d/%d", from, to, f.length());
response.setHeader("Content-Range", responseRange);
response.setDateHeader("Last-Modified", new Date().getTime());
response.setContentLength(len);
requestLogger.info("Content-Range:" + responseRange);
requestLogger.info("length:" + len);
long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
RandomAccessFile raf = new RandomAccessFile(f, "r");
raf.seek(from);
byte[] buf = new byte[IO_BUFFER_SIZE];
try {
while( len != 0) {
int read = raf.read(buf, 0, buf.length > len ? len : buf.length);
os.write(buf, 0, read);
len -= read;
}
} finally {
raf.close();
}
logger.info("r/w took:" + (System.currentTimeMillis() - start));
} finally {
os.close();
}
This solution is better then my first one because it handles all cases for "Range" requests which seems to be a prereq for clients like Chrome to be able to support skipping within the video ( at which point they'll issue a range request for that point in the video).
It's still not perfect though. Further improvments would be setting the "Last-Modified" header correctly and doing proper handling of clients requests an invalid range or a range of something else then bytes.
I suspect this is more about iPad than about Tapestry.
I might invoke Response.disableCompression() before writing the stream to the response; Tapestry may be trying to GZIP your stream, and the iPad may not be prepared for that, as video and image formats are usually already compressed.
Also, I don't see a content type header being set; again the iPad may simply be more sensitive to that than Chrome.

How to properly stream big data from MVC3 without using too much RAM?

I'd like to use HttpResponse.OutputStream together with ContentResult so that I can Flush from time to time to avoid using too much RAM by .Net.
But all examples with MVC FileStreamResult, EmptyResult, FileResult, ActionResult, ContentResult show code that gets all the data into memory and passes to one of those. Also one post suggest that returning EmptyResult together with using HttpResponse.OutputStream is bad idea. How else can I do that in MVC ?
What is the right way to organize flushable output of big data (html or binary) from MVC server ?
Why is returning EmptyResult or ContentResult or FileStreamResult a bad idea ?
You would want to use FileStreamResult if you already had a stream to work with. A lot of times you may only have access to the file, need to build a stream and then output that to the client.
System.IO.Stream iStream = null;
// Buffer to read 10K bytes in chunk:
byte[] buffer = new Byte[10000];
// Length of the file:
int length;
// Total bytes to read:
long dataToRead;
// Identify the file to download including its path.
string filepath = "DownloadFileName";
// Identify the file name.
string filename = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(filepath);
try
{
// Open the file.
iStream = new System.IO.FileStream(filepath, System.IO.FileMode.Open,
System.IO.FileAccess.Read,System.IO.FileShare.Read);
// Total bytes to read:
dataToRead = iStream.Length;
Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream";
Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=" + filename);
// Read the bytes.
while (dataToRead > 0)
{
// Verify that the client is connected.
if (Response.IsClientConnected)
{
// Read the data in buffer.
length = iStream.Read(buffer, 0, 10000);
// Write the data to the current output stream.
Response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, length);
// Flush the data to the HTML output.
Response.Flush();
buffer= new Byte[10000];
dataToRead = dataToRead - length;
}
else
{
//prevent infinite loop if user disconnects
dataToRead = -1;
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// Trap the error, if any.
Response.Write("Error : " + ex.Message);
}
finally
{
if (iStream != null)
{
//Close the file.
iStream.Close();
}
Response.Close();
}
Here is the microsoft article explaining the above code.

blackberry socket connection

I am trying to write simple socket program in blackberry, but it is not working. I have tried a lot. Please someone help me. Is any additional settings are required with simulator?
Thanks in advance :)
try
{
StreamConnection conn =(StreamConnection)Connector.open("socket://some ip:4444;deviceside=false,Connector.READ_WRITE,true");
OutputStreamWriter _out = new OutputStreamWriter(conn.openOutputStream());
String data = "This is a test\n";
int length = data.length();
_out.write(data, 0, length);
InputStreamReader _in = new InputStreamReader(conn.openInputStream());
char[] input = new char[length];
for ( int i = 0; i < length; ++i )
{
input[i] = (char)_in.read();
};
_in.close();
_out.close();
conn.close();
}
If you are trying to connect exactly how you have mentioned above then you indeed are not supposed to be able to connect:
StreamConnection conn =(StreamConnection)Connector.open("socket://some
ip:4444;deviceside=false,Connector.READ_WRITE,true")
because there was a wrongly placed quotation mark after the boolean value true, which should have been placed after ...deviceside=false, i.e. the correct StreamConnection should have formed somewhat like this:
StreamConnection conn =(StreamConnection)Connector.open("socket://some
ip:4444;deviceside=false",Connector.READ_WRITE,true);
The Connector.READ_WRITE and the boolean values are the parameters for the Connector.Open() method.
check the following link it may be help you
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/Java-Development/Different-ways-to-make-an-HTTP-or-socket-connection/ta-p/445879

Connection Closed When trying to post over 1.5K of url encoded data on 8900, and maybe others

From the simulator, this all works.
I'm using wifi on the device as i'm assuming it's the most stable.
The problem occurs when i try to post more than 1.5K of urlencoded data.
If i send less then it's fine.
It seems to hang the .flush command();
It works on a physical 9700, so i'm presuming that it's possibly device specific
In the example below i'm using form variables, but i've also tried posting the content type json, but still had the same issue
I've written a small testapp, and using the main thread so i know that it's not threads getting confused
If anyone has any ideas that would be great.
private String PostEventsTest()
{
String returnValue = "Error";
HttpConnection hc = null;
DataInputStream dis = null;
DataOutputStream dos = null;
StringBuffer messagebuffer = new StringBuffer();
URLEncodedPostData postValuePairs;
try
{
postValuePairs = new URLEncodedPostData(null, false);
postValuePairs.append("DATA",postData);// postData);
hc = (HttpConnection) Connector.open(postURL, Connector.READ_WRITE);
hc.setRequestMethod(HttpConnection.POST);
hc.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", "BlackBerry");
hc.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
hc.setRequestProperty("Content-Length", Integer.toString(postValuePairs.getBytes().length));
//hc.setRequestProperty("Content-Length", Integer.toString(postData.length()));
dos = hc.openDataOutputStream();
dos.write(postValuePairs.getBytes());
dos.flush();
dos.close();
// Retrieve the response back from the servlet
dis = new DataInputStream(hc.openInputStream());
int ch;
// Check the Content-Length first
long len = hc.getLength();
if (len != -1)
{
for (int i = 0; i < len; i++)
if ((ch = dis.read()) != -1)
messagebuffer.append((char) ch);
}
else
{ // if the content-length is not available
while ((ch = dis.read()) != -1)
messagebuffer.append((char) ch);
}
dis.close();
returnValue = "Yahoo";
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
returnValue = ex.toString();
ex.printStackTrace();
}
return returnValue;
}
Instead of data streams you should just use the regular input and output streams. So instead of hc.openDataOutputStream() use hc.openOutputStream(). Data streams are for serializing Java objects to a stream, but you just want to write the raw bytes to the stream -- so a regular outputstream is what you want. Same for reading the response - just use the inputstream returned by hc.openInputStream()

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